Re-read this passage from one of Benjamin Franklin's letters. Then, click the Begin button and answer the questions that follow. When you get to the last screen, compare your answers with sample answers that demonstrate a strong analysis of the text.
Consider how each of these paragraphs begins. What overall organizational pattern does Franklin use in this passage? What main point is he making?
Note the transition word that is used in both paragraphs. What organizational structure does Franklin use within each paragraph?
| Your Responses | Sample Answers |
|---|---|
| Franklin uses a compare-and-contrast structure to show an important difference between opportunities in Europe and those in North America. His main point is that the children of poor families have more opportunities to learn a trade in America than they would in Europe. | |
| Within each paragraph, Franklin uses a cause-and-effect organizational structure. The clue to this structure in each case is the transition word hence. | |
In the old longsettled countries of Europe, all arts, trades, professions, farms, etc. are so full that it is difficult for a poor man who has children, to place them where they may gain, or learn to gain a decent livelihood. The artisans, who fear creating future rivals in business, refuse to take apprentices, but upon conditions of money, maintenance or the like, which the parents are unable to comply with. Hence the youth are dragged up in ignorance of every gainful art, and obliged to become soldiers or servants or thieves, for a subsistence.
In America the rapid increase of inhabitants takes away that fear of rivalship, & artisans willingly receive apprentices from the hope of profit by their labour during the remainder of the time stipulated after they shall be instructed. Hence it is easy for poor families to get their children instructed; for the artisans are so desirous of apprentices, that many of them will even give money to the parents to have boys from ten to fifteen years of age bound apprentices to them till the age of twenty one; and many poor parents have by that means, on their arrival in the country, raised money enough to buy land sufficient to establish themselves, and to subsist the rest of their family by agriculture.
